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The gender coding time of year has started off with a bang. Every time I turn on the TV I am assaulted by commercials featuring little girls playing with plastic stoves and oh, how cool it is and they talk! Apparently, when she wasn't off having adventures featuring sharks, shipwrecks and the rescuing of handsome princes, Ariel was busy filleting fish. I was unaware.
So, sorry. Pardon my sarcasm.
Did you SEE how much junk she had in that cavern? Do you know how much TIME it takes to accumulate that much stuff? How much searching and exploring has to be done? I guess the marketing peeps over at Disney don't really think so.
What really got me, however, was the Dora the Explorer stove.
I am incensed!!! Dora the freaking Explorer has a plastic pink stove!! When does Dora have time to cook???? She's EXPLORING!! What the fuck?! And the worst part?! The very best of the worst part? The stove includes a little phone that rings and when you answer it Dora's friend Diego asks what's for dinner.
*facepalm*
OMG! Are you kidding me right now?
Two of the more proactive female characters for young girls have been chained to the stove.
I mean seriously. Seriously.
And of course that got me to thinking about Buffy and the way that Joss rewrote the blonde cheerleader stereotype. Even Heroes is getting involved with Clare, although with a different purpose and, perhaps, to a lesser degree. I love, and everyone has talked the subject to death, I am sure, how Buffy moves throughout the series from passive to active. As she grows, the movement from WTTH to Graduation, we see her evolve from the hand to the mind. She moves beyond just action (Giles does most of the thinking and deciding) to a planner (the definitive moment in that arc, of course, coming in LMPTM). Even Cordelia, the other obvious female stereotype in the Jossverse, recasts herself over the seasons in very surprising and aggressive ways. Perhaps, even more startling than Buffy's evolution since she begins the series having already begun her evolution. Cordelia we watch from beginning to end.
I find it vastly disconcerting to see marketing that implies, what I see, as a regression, a movement away from action and back into passive gender models. Not that there's anything wrong with home and hearth. Not at all. My mom stayed home until I was maybe eight or nine years old. But, seeing characters that function outside of traditional gender codes of behavior recast into a traditional model is just wrong and disturbing. If they were going to do this, couldn't they have picked a character that already functioned as part of that (gods, I am completely losing my words) behavioral model?
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Am I being overly sensitive? Maybe it's just a pink plastic stove and who cares? Would YOU buy one for your daughter? What if your son wanted one?
I'm curious.
Oh and a note to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glossing: THANK YOU!! I will email you later. But everything made perfect sense and thank you thank you thank you!!!
So, sorry. Pardon my sarcasm.
Did you SEE how much junk she had in that cavern? Do you know how much TIME it takes to accumulate that much stuff? How much searching and exploring has to be done? I guess the marketing peeps over at Disney don't really think so.
What really got me, however, was the Dora the Explorer stove.
I am incensed!!! Dora the freaking Explorer has a plastic pink stove!! When does Dora have time to cook???? She's EXPLORING!! What the fuck?! And the worst part?! The very best of the worst part? The stove includes a little phone that rings and when you answer it Dora's friend Diego asks what's for dinner.
*facepalm*
OMG! Are you kidding me right now?
Two of the more proactive female characters for young girls have been chained to the stove.
I mean seriously. Seriously.
And of course that got me to thinking about Buffy and the way that Joss rewrote the blonde cheerleader stereotype. Even Heroes is getting involved with Clare, although with a different purpose and, perhaps, to a lesser degree. I love, and everyone has talked the subject to death, I am sure, how Buffy moves throughout the series from passive to active. As she grows, the movement from WTTH to Graduation, we see her evolve from the hand to the mind. She moves beyond just action (Giles does most of the thinking and deciding) to a planner (the definitive moment in that arc, of course, coming in LMPTM). Even Cordelia, the other obvious female stereotype in the Jossverse, recasts herself over the seasons in very surprising and aggressive ways. Perhaps, even more startling than Buffy's evolution since she begins the series having already begun her evolution. Cordelia we watch from beginning to end.
I find it vastly disconcerting to see marketing that implies, what I see, as a regression, a movement away from action and back into passive gender models. Not that there's anything wrong with home and hearth. Not at all. My mom stayed home until I was maybe eight or nine years old. But, seeing characters that function outside of traditional gender codes of behavior recast into a traditional model is just wrong and disturbing. If they were going to do this, couldn't they have picked a character that already functioned as part of that (gods, I am completely losing my words) behavioral model?
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Am I being overly sensitive? Maybe it's just a pink plastic stove and who cares? Would YOU buy one for your daughter? What if your son wanted one?
I'm curious.
Oh and a note to
glossing: THANK YOU!! I will email you later. But everything made perfect sense and thank you thank you thank you!!!
no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 06:24 pm (UTC)From:In a word: no.
It's deeply disturbing, and deeply depressing, like most of the world of Stuff For Kids. And I honestly don't know what I'd do if Lillian wanted one. On the one hand, it's an upward battle against the forces of gender stereotyping and coding. On the other, well, I remember how cranky my mother's refusal to buy me Barbie dolls made me.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 09:15 pm (UTC)From:I had Barbies as a kid. I played with them with my brother because he had He-Man 'action figures' and all of our dolls went on adventures together. But when I look at the marketing for Barbie, the things that she represents in the mainstream, it drives me bananas.